Bay Of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, MARCH 21, 1949 AN INEVITABLE DECISION

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 67, 21 March 1949, Page 4

Bay Of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, MARCH 21, 1949

AN INEVITABLE DECISION

Faced with the serious problem of an under-staffed and overpopulated hospital, the Bay of Plenty Hospital Board has been forced to make the inevitable decision to .restrict the entry of patients. Response to its desperate appeal for more staff has been poor, and, quite apart from the staffing problem, ward space has long been inadequate. ■Big responsibility rests on the matron and medical superintendent, whose job it is to be to make recomendations as to the form the restrictions will take, but no-one will doubt that whatever they recommend will be in the best interests of those who need hospital treatment most.

We are not alone in our dilemma. Hospitals in most parts of the country seem to be expanding rapidly, and the staff shortage is felt acutely in nearly all of them. It would almost seem, if we take the figures at their face value, that our national health has suffered a steady decline in recent years. More people than ever before have been treated in bigger hospitals than we ever had previously, and more nurses than ever are run off their feet ministering to the needs of a constantly increasing stream of patients.

Yet we are told from authoritative sources that our health services are better than ever before and that therefore the national standard of health should be, and indeed is, higher than hitherto. What, then, is the answer? Some members of the medical profession have laid some of the blame at the door of a Social Security system that encourages, even compels, private practitioners to hand on a larger proportion of cases than ever before to the public hospitals for treatment.

The logic of their argument is at once apparent. A free visit to the doctor is a great temptation to the anxious mother whose little darling has a tummy-ache from constipation through par : ental neglect, or the man or woman with lots of time to spare and a trifling ailment brought about through over-eating, overdrinking or lack of exercise to talk about. Merely to fill in the requisite forms to collect his fee and to tell them they are unlikely to die before morning takes. up some of the doctor’s time that might otherwise be used in treating those who really need medical attention. While it is true that free medical service has lifted a great burden of worry from the mind of the wage-earning father of a family, and from the minds of all those in the lower income groups whose lives were previously overshadowed by the fear of costly illness, it is also true that the system we have at prefar from ideal. And there does seem little doubt that a lot. of the congestion at hospitals is being caused by the influx of patients whom private practitioners can no longer find time to treat, however they might wish tq do so.